Since its founding in 1991, AquaBounty has burned through more than $67 million developing the fast-growing fish. According to its midyear financial report, the company had less than $1.5 million in cash and stock left. It has no other products in development

This could be a bright spot. If you spend $67 million over roughly 22 years (Avarage of $3 million per year) $1.5 million would last roughly 6 months. In any case delay may be the best weapon that opponents have available here.

It looks like the dollar cost and the amount of time taken to develop the product, as well as safety issues, may cripple these sorts of projects. Who would want to invest in something that takes 20+ years to develop and then be a complete loss?

I suppose this company thought it would get rich like big pharma that is determined to pump us full of poisons from the cradle to the grave.

There are strong parallels with Big pharma. Long development time (BP 7-10 yr) and high cost (BP $500 million). BP has to charge high prices to cover the development costs of items which fail testing in the earlier stages of development. These people might be able to convince authorities that the product is in fact an "edible fish" and thus defer the costs of testing for safety on the marketplace. i.e. Toss it out there and see what happens. Also see if you can trace problems to our product in particular.

Interesting situation, they may run out of money and the project dies or they may be able to get financing and official approval and make a killing. As I understand it this is the first GM animal considered for food status so there is no precedent to look at.

Interesting situation, they may run out of money and the project dies or they may be able to get financing and official approval and make a killing. As I understand it this is the first GM animal considered for food status so there is no precedent to look at.

And it totally gives me the creeps!!!

"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." -- Benjamin Franklin

Not an unreasonable reaction. I have done a little more search on this and found an explanation of why Big Pharmas prices are so high.

Quoted from Wiki

Candidates for a new drug to treat a disease might theoretically include from 5,000 to 10,000 chemical compounds. On average about 250 of these will show sufficient promise for further evaluation using laboratory tests, mice and other test animals. Typically, about ten of these will qualify for tests on humans.[5] A study conducted by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development covering the 1980s and 1990s found that only 21.5 percent of drugs that start phase I trials are eventually approved for marketing

Sorting through so many possibilities costs a lot of money which is reflected in the price of whatever makes it to market.

The GM Salmon people, on the other hand, start with one item and have much less "false lead" costs.

There is also controversy on what the actual BP costs are ranging in the last few years between $800 million to $2 billion for a major drug.

I can see with BP you could assess effectiveness/risk but I think GM salmon will go out risk unknown. How could you assess the risk of anything that complex anyway, that is assuming you wanted to.

Even if they consider the risk "minimal," we are exposed to thousands of "minimal," man-made risks every single day!! What does all that add up to anyway? A WHOLE LOT in my opinion! Where do we stop minimalizing risks?? They went from "wild caught" to "farm-raised" (more like toxic garbage-raised) to "Frankenfish." How much more will the public "swallow?" Or be able to physically tolerate, for that matter.

"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." -- Benjamin Franklin

Even if they consider the risk "minimal," we are exposed to thousands of "minimal," man-made risks every single day!! What does all that add up to anyway? A WHOLE LOT in my opinion! Where do we stop minimalizing risks?? They went from "wild caught" to "farm-raised" (more like toxic garbage-raised) to "Frankenfish." How much more will the public "swallow?" Or be able to physically tolerate, for that matter.

The difference may indeed be minimal. This is the difference:

Quoted from article

The AquaAdvantage salmon has an added growth hormone from the Pacific Chinook salmon that allows the fish to produce growth hormone all year long. The engineers were able to keep the hormone active by using another gene from an eel-like fish called an ocean pout that acts like an "on" switch for the hormone. Typical Atlantic salmon produce the growth hormone for only part of the year.

I would this would seriously alter the organism but maybe not.

As per "minimal risks" adding up, true, but we are tremendously advantaged over the people of the past as we have greater access to information and choices than even 20 years ago. Its the many people who are living in oblivion who take the big hit.

Well, I'm pretty sure that altered salmon couldn't even be put in the same category with that McRib concoction. (Shuddering!) As for the selection of food we have these days that isn't messed up some way or another, it is definitely better now. An organic veggie was not to be found in a store, and the only way you could get "organic" meat was to kill a deer or some other less desirable animal in the wild. On the other hand, home gardeners didn't have to contend with the industrial strength bugs we have today, either, so insecticides were not poured all over everything to get rid of them. I had only seen one Japanese Beetle in my entire life before 1989. In just a few years, they were so prolific around here that they actually killed a beautiful plum tree in our yard. Rachel Carson was scorned to death because she wrote about these things. I wonder what she would say about engineered fish............

I probably wouldn't be even giving this a thought except we can be assured that we will never know whether we have eaten any of this stuff or not because the government will make certain that we won't. Apparently, Dr. D. was ahead of the "game," though, because salmon is not even a superfood for me now except Sockeye, and it is not a diamond.

"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." -- Benjamin Franklin

I suppose if these things get loose into the wild, and the bears and eagles, who eat salmon, start having weird problems it will take several decades before the "scientists" will admit that it has any connection whatsoever to the frankenfish! Ordinary salmon dive to the bottom when an eagle or bear appears, but these fish are used to eating from the hands of "keepers" and won't be afraid of predators. This sounds too much like Pandora's Box!

Mostly the deaths were from diseases that are a snap to treat in our day. The diseases we are manufacturing today are subtle, the effects of which can be passed from one generation to the next with each generation becoming more and more susceptible to more and more additional diseases.

"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." -- Benjamin Franklin

Looked at from that perspective it comes through as not-so-bad compared with the awful. Although I can understand the rationale for what they are doing it would nice to see some transparency and realism going on here. (The fish are safe from ocean release? Not really, there has been at least one case in Nova Scotia where divers have releasd fish) In any case they cannot expect me as a customer.

Mostly the deaths were from diseases that are a snap to treat in our day. The diseases we are manufacturing today are subtle, the effects of which can be passed from one generation to the next with each generation becoming more and more susceptible to more and more additional diseases.

I would agree generally with that but it comes as a broader package deal. We certainly have a better opportunity further our own best intrests now than did people of that era. I find it difficult here to nget a grip on the "we" of all this when I can see foolishness operating on a mass level. The only thing I can see to do is take care of my own personal affairs and influence things for the better if given the opportunity.

I would guess that GM salmon would be designed to be infertile in much the same way as GM wheat does not produce viable seed. Fish farmers would be forced to buy fry from the supplier rather than attempt to let some spawn, just as wheat farmers must buy seed year after year.

My SWAMI diet is a blend of BTD and GTD Explorer, but I'm not totally compliant. Also I try to choose foods that have a Low Glycemic index. DW and DD are A+, probably also Explorer.

The promise to the regulatory agencies is that AquAdvantage® Salmon would be grown as sterile, all-female populations and would not be able to reproduce.

I guess that covers the "reproduction with wild stock" side of things and they probably would not survive long in tyhe wild in any case/

There must be a lot of presure on natural Salmon tock to have to go to these lenghts to produce foodstuffs. I know the industry in Canada is running on minimal on both coasts and I would assume such is the case elsewhere.